Annual review article: Is it time to rethink the gender agenda in entrepreneurship research?

Abstract

Abstract.This article develops a critique of contemporary approaches to analysing the impact of gender upon entrepreneurial propensity and activity. Since the 1990s, increasing attention has been afforded to the influence of gender upon women's entrepreneurial behaviour; such analyses have highlighted an embedded masculinity within the entrepreneurial discourse which privileges men as normative entrepreneurial actors.Whilst invaluable in revealing a prevailing bias which portrays women in deficit as entrepreneurial actors, their critique is limited in that they tend to position women as a proxy for the gendered subject. Analyses that fail to recognise gender as a human property with myriad articulations not only homogenise women as a category, but also ignore how gender manifests in all entrepreneurial phenomena. To progress debate, we engage more deeply with the notion of gender as a multiplicity by recognising its diversity and considering the implications of such for future studies of entrepreneurial activity.

Entrepreneurial Business: Genetic Lottery or a Choice

“…Many studies suggest that the past studies in the field of entrepreneurship constructed models and theories based on male entrepreneurs (Bird & Brush, 2002;Marlow & Martinez, 2018), which is why the validity and applicability of these models and conclusions on female entrepreneurs is called into question. Bruni et al (2004) state that the male entrepreneurship model can be seen as universal and gender neutral when the emphasis on masculinity is invisible, and that female entrepreneurs will adapt to the seemingly gender-neutral set of values, while the men will adapt to the values that are "entrepreneurially" masculine.…”

Women's entrepreneurship and social capital: Exploring the link between the domestic sphere and the marketplace in Pakistan

“…Women's entry to markets as traders is culturally prohibited, and markets serve as men's entrepreneurial sphere (Khan, 2019). Such research geographies translate into a gender‐segregated body of literature: women's entrepreneurship research is mainly by women, for women, and about women, while studies on male entrepreneurship are mainly for men, by men, and about men (Marlow & Martinez Dy, 2018, p. 3). The scarcity of female researchers in the marketplace literature in Pakistan (Amirali, 2017) and the infrequent presence of male scholars studying women's entrepreneurship in the country (Roomi, 2013; Ullah, Ahmad, Manzoor, Hussain, & Farooq, 2012) perhaps present one of the best examples of this gender segregation within entrepreneurship research (Khan, 2018).…”

‘We were fighting for our place’: Resisting gender knowledge regimes through feminist knowledge network formation

“…There is a general absence of feminist expertise in the keynotes of international business and management studies conferences, while gender‐related research and/or research on women tends to be channelled into separate tracks, no matter the area of inquiry (Marlow & Martinez Dy, ). Feminist expertise is arguably positioned as ‘non‐knowledge’ that is ‘deflected, covered and obscured’ in organizational contexts through ‘practices of obfuscation and deliberate insulation from unsettling information’ (McGoey, , p. 3).…”

“…Second, critical feminist work has explored and critiqued the patriarchal gendering of the phenomenon, as well as the discipline of entrepreneurship studies itself (Ahl & Marlow, 2012;Calás, Smircich, & Bourne, 2009). Finally, narrow conceptualizations of gender as a property belonging solely to women are challenged, with calls for entrepreneurship, business and management research to draw on feminist knowledge from other disciplines taking gender as a complex multiplicity, relevant to all actors and influenced by context (Marlow & Martinez Dy, 2017).…”